You Only Live Once

Chapter 13

            All that happened on Monday was a long boring car ride back to Macungie, with the twist that John and I were alone in my car talking the entire time, and on Tuesday I drove Sierra and myself to school. We were just walking into the band room for symphonic, laughing and joking around, but when we walked in the room I could feel the change in the air.

            “Alena!” a voice shouted from behind me and the next second I was being tackled by my friend Mike, a sophomore who was in my section for marching band last year until he thought he was too good for us and joined drum line. He had been gone the past few weeks due to a trip overseas to travel with his family.

            “Did you know that life used to be relatively peaceful around here lately?” Sierra asked him as she grabbed her trumpet case then followed the two of us over to the marimba.          

            “Peaceful just means boring, c’mon, you both know you missed me,” he said with a grin, Sierra and I looked at each other before we each shoved a shoulder and Mike went tumbling over the box full of random auxiliary equipment making a huge ruckus. Our band director walked out at that moment and sent a glare over at Mike, and when he walked away Sierra and I started cracking up.

            “How the heck is that fair, he already hates me enough as it is,” Mike complained, poking my arm.

            “That sounds like a you problem,” I replied and he walked away grumbling as class started and we had to warm up. Ainsley and I were standing together bored, and when I looked back over at Mike, he was shooting a deck of cards from one hand to his other hand with a bored expression on his face.

            At the end of class, I was playing one of my parts quietly to myself, when Mike walked up grabbing the mallets away from me.

            “Can’t I just have one moment of peace with you not bothering me?” I asked, trying to grab the mallets back but he held them just out of my reach. I frowned in annoyance and kept trying to grab them but he kept moving them away from me to the point where we were doing it for three minutes until Sierra walked up behind him and grabbed my mallets back.

            “Letting you have peace would ruin my job as your little brother,” Mike said with a small grin, guess he was never going to let that joke go. “Plus,” he added, “I am coming over to your house later on because I think I deserve a welcome home party with you and Sierra and Jake.”

            “You can’t just invite yourself over to my house, you can’t even drive there,” I said in exasperation, he just smiled and ran off when the bell rang, leaving me staring at the crowd he just disappeared into.

Sierra walked up to me with a smile and said, “You know you have to admit it’s a lot more interesting around here with him back.”

            “I don’t know if interesting if the exact word I would use but we can just settle on that for the time being,” I replied, grabbing my backpack and following her out the door.

            We walked to Global and pretty soon I was walking into drawing class where John was already waiting for me with a huge grin on his face. “How are you today?” he asked, following me over to our table after I grabbed my drawing board.

            “Well you see, I was having a beautiful relaxing day with barely any homework from my first few classes, when all of a sudden the peace that had been surrounding me in a blanket of bliss, was suddenly ripped off by Mike’s presence,” I replied, over exaggerating nearly everything that I just told him.